Traditional handheld game consoles —ie. PS Vita, Nintendo 3DS, PSP etc.—are at risk of completely losing the gaming market to smartphones, according to a recent report from IDC’s App Annie. As indicated in the report, the gaming sales from both the iOS app store and Google Playstore have been rising steadily from the first to second quarters of 2013. For the traditional gaming handhelds, whose market performance has been anything but promising as of late, the gaming sales total experienced a slight, although noticeable, dip during Q2.

It would not be unreasonable, in the coming periods, to expect further woes to befall the traditional handheld gaming market. As shown in App Annie’s report, Apple’s and Google’s app stores are already beginning to account for more than 40% of the total game downloads within the industry. The consumer spending comparison depicted in the above diagram is also very telling: the app revenues of the iOS app store and Google playstore, when added together, are approximately four times the revenues earned by all the games released by handhelds.

The original Annie App report, along with a few more key statistics, can be seen here.